Do internet marketers think too small?

Are internet marketers thinking too small?

Yes, they are. And it's truly sad.

Don't get me wrong - the internet is a wonderful tool to have in your toolkit. I run a number of sites that make me an ongoing income so I can't speak negatively about the internet.

I personally think that most of them have it ALL wrong though when it comes to building a long term, sustainable business.

Not all of them, as there are some great marketers online that quietly do offline marketing as well. But most "internet" marketers are putting themselves in danger.

Why?

Well - number 1 reason is your database. You've probably heard it a thousand times... "the gold is in the list" - which is true.

But, "the gold is in an email address" is NOT true.

There are some people making very good in.comes with online only marketing... but they think too small.

If they started putting 10-20% of their efforts (to start) into collecting offline names and addresses and sending THE EXACT SAME marketing messages to them in print - the proof shows they would get 5 - 10X the response.

This is based on my own numbers - based on any one of the big offline marketers that tests their same marketing online.

At the recent Dan Kennedy/Bill Glazer Info Marketing Summit - Porter Stansbury revealed the dramatic differences between their online and offline response.

Dan Kennedy just wrote in his Perilous Times report "if you rely on any one media for more than 20% of your income, you have an unbalanced, poorly run, exceptionally fragile and vulnerable business."(the internet is only one media channel if many others you can choose from - direct mail, radio, telemarketing, etc...)

Number 2: The Google boys are not stupid either.

The little games the online marketers are playing to beat the search engines - they work for a while then google catches them and they lose all their sites (and their income) - then they start all over again rebuilding their business... is that the way YOU want to run your business?The only reason people are making money with online only marketing is that there is almost zero cost to doing it online... but it will not stay that way.

When the costs to run your online marketing efforts are equal to the offline efforts - you will see a lot less of the junk in your mailbox and the quality of the content will be higher as well.

Number 3: People still love to hold paper in their hands and will sit down with a long copy sales letter or report and read it - much tougher to get people to do that from their computer screen (have you ever tried to read a 200 page ebook? Painful - but print it off - and it's much easier.)

For 2007, start finding ways to collect physical addresses from your internet efforts. You will have doubled the number of ways you can communicate with your clients and prospects - and you WILL experience a dramatic boost to your responses and offers.